5 steps to making it on your own

In this article we discuss practical steps to take your corporate America job and turning it into your own business. You have lots to gain from being on salary, you just need to mix in a little ambition.

You can do it

Jump out and start your own thing.

Hey, what’s up world? Hey, Scott Stickane here, again. House of Sticks. I realize it’s been about a month since I got another video up and I said in the last video that I’d have one up tomorrow, maybe. Guess what. I have a YouTube channel. Doing this stuff is way harder than I thought it was. But today, right now what we’re going to talk about is five things that everybody can do to get out of your crappy corporate America job.

Welcome back there’s lots been going on this last month, lots to talk about. We just got back from India where we made a short film. We wanted to promote our video production company in Dallas and our awesome talents here. Pat self on shoulder. We made some really awesome connections with people. We got some really sick footage. I’ll show some of that here in a couple weeks. But it’s so good to be back in America, working with companies and providing services and and productions and media for all of our awesome clients.

But today, we’re going to talk about the five things that you can do just to make sure that you get out of corporate America and do the things that you really want to do because like I said before, my desire for this channel is really to give you the opportunity, the place, the platform to be able to ask questions to put yourself in a situation where you can accomplish the things that you want to do. And I just really want to be a resource. So I don’t know how much you know about my story, we will get to that and probably some other episode. I think I recorded that in the last video but I’m not sure if I’m going to show it because it feels kind of weird. Anyway.

boardroom black and white of house of sticks

5 Things

So five things.
Number one, make a plan. I know it sounds really silly and really simple but the best thing that you can do at your corporate job is if you want to make a change, you have to figure out how to make that change into reality. The best way to do that is probably for you to make a plan. Now you say Scott, what are you talking about, a plan? Really simply, look at your job in a different way. Figure out where am I now and where do I want to go? How do I take advantage of the things that I have in my job and what don’t I have that tell me where I want to go? Figure out what’s in between the two and make the little steps in between to get where you want to go. Maybe it’s buying a new camera for yourself. Maybe it’s taking time off and being more intentional with your projects. Maybe it’s sticking around on every project and making sure you get that extra shot or that extra whatever, to put in your portfolio to put in your real to get noticed and get other jobs, right? Because that’s the goal. At the end of the day, you work for money. You don’t work because you want to work for another company. You work so that you can eat, so you can pay rent and ultimately you can do the things that you want to do. Make a plan, write it down. I guess that’s kind of 1a and 1b but anyway.

Number two. The thing that you really want to make sure that you can do to make a good, after you’ve made your good plan is to start taking steps on that plan. It’s the most difficult one of all these five things is actually doing. So many people plan and plan and plan and have their plan in place, but they never execute it. So the second really thing that you really, really have to do is start walking, right? The journey of a thousand miles starts with one step. So let this be an encouragement to you to start doing. Stop talking about things, stop planning things after you get that plan in place. Just try and be okay with the results. Whatever it is, be okay with the results.


Number three. Number three for you. Please, please be okay with failure. So many times in corporate America you hear all this stuff like it’s okay to fail. Fail quickly, do all these things, but when it really comes down to it, nobody really wants you to fail. The idea here of failing quickly is so that you can quickly, as quickly as possible, you can figure out, remember you are trying to go from here to here? I guess that’s camera on backwards, you are trying to go from here to here. What you really want to do is make sure that you can take all the little steps somewhere along the way, you going to take the wrong step. So ideally what you want to do is be okay enough with failing to go hey, this is the wrong way. Come on creative people. Correct steps are good, but learn from the bad ones. Let’s go back to the right step and be okay with failure because you know what’s going to happen? A lot of times there’s happy surprises along the way where you’re going to be able to not take the right step, but that right step will lead you to the thing that you really want it to do in the end. Which brings me to point number four.

The best thing that you can do at your corporate job is to make a plan and execute

Number Four. Be willing to change your plan along the way. It’s one thing to have a plan. It’s great, it’s great to actually start doing it. Fail quickly but really in the end, be okay with being flexible. Being flexible is going to be really the key component to everything that you’re going to want to be able to do because there is absolutely no way you’re going to understand what you needed to do today versus where you want to be in 10 years, or five years from now or even next year.

But anyway, back to the point. Make sure that you are absolutely, 100% okay with changing your plan. Having a plan is great but even better than that is being flexible and being able to chart a new course to a new destination that’s a new plan that you may find better than your original plan. So be okay with it. Go for it.

Number five. Probably the most important one in the most difficult one for somebody like me, love everybody along the way. The best thing that you’re going to have is the relationships in your life. So make sure that you take care of all the people that help you get there. It’s one thing to have talent, it’s another thing completely to be a good person with talent. If you are a really super talented person and everybody loves you, man, you’d have all sorts of jobs. Typically those people aren’t around. But less talented people who are really, really super good and really super good to work with tend to get a lot of work and a lot of jobs and a lot of opportunities. So make sure you take care of everybody around you from the smallest person to the most important person. Look at everybody the same, be a great individual, love those as you want to be loved and man, go from there.

So with all that said, make a comment. Let me know what you want to do. Five tips to get out of corporate America. I know they are a little touchy-feely, but you know what? We are starting to try to figure out what I want to do and how we want this channel to go. Trying to keep the excitement up. Trying to make this sucker go live.

So anyway. Leave a comment if you want to subscribe, do that whole thing. Follow us. We will post all of our projects on Vimeo, on our Vimeo link. We’ve got a whole content calendar for you for this whole upcoming year. Scott Stickane, House of Sticks. I’m out.